Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War

8

OFF THE MOUTH OF THE MERSEY RIVER, LIVERPOOL BAY, 8:22 AM, SEPTEMBER 4, 1863

Lamson had asked his chief engineer for every bit of speed the engines of the Gettysburg could generate. The word had spread through the crew that the ship was speeding west to pounce on their unsuspecting quarry. The black gangs sprang to their broad shovels with a will to feed the boilers with the good Welsh coal taken aboard at Liverpool. The fires burned hot as the sweat slicked off them in dark, greasy rivulets. Had they been galley rowers in ancient Greece, they themselves would have been the motive engines of their ship, their muscles fed with energy from bread dipped in olive oil. Now the hard coal of Wales replaced muscles to power the world.

Moelfre Bay was just short of forty-five nautical miles from the Mersey’s mouth. Lamson could make it in three hours or a bit less. Gettysburg had taken off like an arrow, leaving Liverpool behind just as she was joined by Goshawk. As it was, Lamson had a barely fifteen-minute head start. The lookout shouted that the British ships were coming directly after them. Lamson could only conclude that they would try to snatch his prey from him. Fox had chosen Gettysburg for her speed, and that speed was the only advantage he had now. Liverpool could do between ten and twelve knots to Gettysburg’s sixteen. That meant they would arrive at Moelfre Bay in about four hours. None of this would mean a damn if North Carolina had already transferred its crew and departed. In that case, he would be following her most likely course to the Azores. There are too many ifs, he thought.

Two hours and fifty minutes later, the biggest “if” was answered as Gettysburg steamed into Moelfre Bay. The lookout had already reported a few ships in the bay, including a cluster near the shore. It did not take long for Lamson’s glass to reveal that it was North Carolina and several lighters. He slammed the telescope glass shut. “Battle stations, Mr. Porter.” Most of the men were already at their stations, as eager for this prize as the captain was.

It took the crew of the new Confederate ironclad longer to discover the fast steamer racing toward them. When they did, everyone stopped and stared. One of the officers ran up to James Bulloch. “Sir, she’s the Yankee that was in King’s Dock.”

Bulloch was tight lipped while looking through his glass. “So she is. So she is. Well, don’t just stand there. Get the men to the sheets. Tell the engineer to give me full speed.”

“We’ll never make it, sir. Look how fast she is approaching.”

Bulloch turned on him, drawing a pistol. “Now, Mr. Wilson.”

It did not take long for the Gettysburg’s lookout to spot commotion on the decks of the ironclad. “She’s seen us, Mr. Porter. Prepare to put a shot across her bow.” Lamson had extended his telescope again; he was within range and could see men scurrying to bring sacks and boxes from the lighter tied up to the ironclad. Then the last of them jumped aboard a small craft that peeled away from North Carolina whose own smokestack was beginning to puff deep coils of black coal smoke. Gettysburg raced through the waves like a greyhound as her prey began to get under way. “Fire, when ready, Mr. Porter.”

“Are you crazy?” The scream came from behind him. Lamson turned on his heel to see who would address the ship’s captain with such blasphemy. It was Henry Adams with a look of horror on his face. “We are still in British waters. You cannot fire on them here.”

“Fire!” The forward XI-inch pivot gun snapped back as the round shot flew across the leaden waters of the bay to splash only a few yards from North Carolina’s bow. She did not stop.

“Mr. Adams, I will not be addressed so on my own quarterdeck. Kindly go below.” He turned to Mr. Porter and said, “Aim for their steering gear.” Adams did not go below. He stayed on deck and gibbered something about British territorial waters. When they closed to eight hundred yards, the pivot gun captain shouted, “Fire!’ The great bottle-shaped gun sprang back again with a roar. The first shell struck just behind the stern and went skipping off across the water. The next struck the stern. It penetrated the three-and-a-half-inch armor plate there and exploded inside, but the ironclad was building up a head of steam, attempting to get out to sea. Gettysburg closed to four hundred yards and sent a steady stream of XI-inch shells from all her guns that could bear into North Carolina. They smashed the steering, punched through the armored hull in several places to explode inside, and sent the foremast crashing over the side. The ram’s armor was no protection against Admiral Dahlgren’s guns at full charge. Her trial-run crew was not up to the pounding; nor was the rest of the men, who had been taken on only the hour before and were still unfamiliar with the ship. They huddled belowdecks. The engineer and his crew had shut down the engine.

“Oh, dear God. Lamson, do you realize what you’ve done?” Adams shouted.

“Indeed, I do, Mr. Adams. I have obeyed my orders to prevent this ship from escaping to become another Alabama. Those orders were further seconded by Mr. Seward, if I remember your father’s statement. Now get below, or keep silent.” Adams leaned against the railing and put his face in his hands. Porter signaled to a Marine to escort Adams below.

On the ram, Bulloch recognized the inevitable as the Gettysburg closed. All his dreams and efforts had been smashed by the XI-inch Dahlgrens. There was at least one more thing he could do. He went below to his cabin and threw open his sea chest. He drew out the gray uniform of a Confederate States Navy officer and caressed its fine wool and gilt buttons before changing into it. Next, he drew from the chest a dress sword presented to him by George Trenholm. He looked himself over in the mirror and was satisfied. At least, I will command this ship at her last, he thought. There was one more item in the chest. He held it reverently to his chest, then tucked it under his arm, and climbed to the deck.⁴

He found it almost deserted. He climbed to the quarterdeck and found the halyard from which the British merchant colors flew. He hauled them down.

Lamson was barely a hundred yards away and shouted the command to cease firing. The men saw the British colors come down and raised a cheer. “Do you strike, sir?” Lamson shouted through a megaphone.

Bulloch bellowed across the water, “No! By God, sir, the Confederate States Ship North Carolina has not struck!” He hoisted the Confederate naval ensign to the top of its staff. Then he walked over to the rail and shook his fist, “Now, sir! Do your worst!”

Gettysburg’s larboard battery thundered, sending three more shells through the ironclad’s plate to explode inside the empty casemate. “Prepare to board!” Lamson shouted. Lamson was drawing his sword when Adams, who had broken away from his escort, grabbed his arm. “You dare, sir?” the captain asked as he pulled back his arm.

“Don’t you see? Don’t you see? We are saved!”

“What the hell do you mean, Mr. Adams?”

Henry Adams was beside himself with excitement. “When he raised that rebel rag, he removed the protection of British sovereignty from his ship. He became a belligerent, liable to be attacked at any time or place, and revealed that was his intention all the time.”

Lamson blinked. All well and good, but he had more to do now than think about the rights of belligerents as Gettysburg came alongside North Carolina. Grappling hooks flew over the narrowing space until the hulls ground against each other. Lamson, sword and pistol in hand, led the boarding party of Marines and sailors over the side. Other than the angry man on the captain’s quarterdeck, the upper decks of the ship were empty save for a pool of blood or two. The men fanned out as Lamson led a party up to the quarterdeck. He approached Bulloch, who stood there gloriously alone.

Lamson holstered his pistol and touched his fingers to his cap brim. “You are my prisoner, sir.”

Bulloch bowed slightly and returned the salute. “I see that the fortunes of war regretfully have made that so, Captain.” He slowly drew his sword and handed it hilt first to Lamson. The Confederate colors fluttered down the halyard at the same time and fell at his feet.

Lamson turned to the ensign that had come aboard with him. “Mr. Henderson, escort Captain…” he looked at Bulloch and said, “I do not believe I know your name, Captain.”

“The name is Bulloch, sir, Capt. James Dunwoody Bulloch, Confederate States Navy.”

“Mr. Henderson, escort Captain Bulloch to my cabin and see that he is comfortable. Ask Mr. Adams to join me here.”

Adams found Lamson searching through papers in Bulloch’s cabin. Lamson looked up. Any anger he may have felt for Adams’s hysteria on deck had evaporated in the excitement of what he had found. “Look at these,” he said and spread papers across the table. His purpose was everywhere; there was even preprinted official stationary for the CSS North Carolina.⁷

“I saw at least three things on the way here, Captain, that were stamped or carved with the ship’s name. Proof! Russell wants endless proofs. We can start with sending him the ships’ bell.” Adams pulled up a chair and started to go over the papers, “I will be awhile, but I think these will nail the British to the wall.”

Lamson left him to his work and went back on deck. The ironclad’s crew had been brought up and was under guard. There were a half dozen wounded men being attended by their own surgeon and the Gettysburg’s. Porter was examining the papers of the crew. “These papers confirm that almost every man here is a British subject. If they weren’t all Royal Navy, I’d be much surprised.”

“They’re nothing but a liability, Mr. Porter. Put them in the ship’s boats and let them row ashore, but winnow out any of Captain’s Bulloch’s Confederates. Have the engineer report to me as well. Tell him I want to know the condition of this ship’s engines and whether she has the coal to get to an American port. We may put a prize crew in her yet. It would be grand, Mr. Porter, to not only take this enemy but take her home as well.”

“Aye, sir, grand indeed.”

“Waste no time, Mr. Porter. We don’t have much before our British friends arrive. I want them to find this bay empty of us.” Lamson allowed himself twenty minutes to inspect the casemated gun deck and one of the turrets. The gun deck was a shambles of smashed and splintered teak and twisted armor plates. He carefully examined the damage; the Navy would be eager to hear what the Dahlgren guns could do to the best British armor plate. The turret was even more interesting, being built on a different principle than Mr. Ericsson’s central moving spindle. There was much to learn, but so little time. A Marine found him and said that Porter requested his presence on deck.

When Lamson joined him, Porter pointed east. “Liverpool, Captain, with Goshawk fifteen minutes behind. Faster than we thought.”

“Get Mr. Adams back on board Gettysburg. Have the engineer report to me. We will not be taking this ship home as a prize. But I won’t give her back so that they can hand her over to the Confederacy. We will sink her right here.”

Liverpool slowed warily as she approached the two ships. Her captain noticed that there was no smoke coming from the ironclad but plenty rising from the American ship. She would be able to leap forward at a moment’s notice. He also noticed that the American ship moved to keep herself between the ram and Liverpool. The wreckage of an engagement aboard the ironclad was also impossible to miss, as were the American colors. The captain was in a quandary for his orders did not cover such an eventuality. The day before he had been ordered to observe and follow the American ship as long as she was in British waters. This morning, Goshawk had brought the urgent new orders-to pursue and seize the escaped Laird Brothers ram.

He ordered beat to quarters. Gettysburg’s gun crews stood their posts in silence as they watched the British guns run out. They knew that Gettysburg’s broadside had only four guns as opposed to the almost twenty British guns. The Liverpool was only wood, but Gettysburg’s iron hull was vulnerable as well and its side-wheels even more so.

A boat came over from Liverpool. The captain himself climbed the ladder to be met by hastily assembled Marines and a petty officer to pipe him aboard. He tipped his hat to the colors and stepped forward to meet Lamson. He bowed and then saluted. Lamson returned the courtesies. Capt. Rowley Lambert was about forty, spare as a beanpole, and affected all the Royal Navy’s disdain for the upstart U.S. Navy. He was especially disdainful of the mere youth that said he was the captain of this warship.

For a moment he looked around at the huge soda bottle-shaped Dahlgrens. He knew their reputation as the finest smoothbores in the world. He also knew that his thirty-nine guns, even as old as they were, could shred Gettysburg before she could get off many shots. He refused Lamson’s invitation to go below for a brandy and came to the point. “I must know the meaning of your presence in these waters and why you have attacked a British ship in British waters.”

Lamson had been coached by Adams to say, “I have pursued and seized a belligerent ship that was attempting to escape to open sea, sir.”

“What rubbish is that, sir? She is a British ship, built by Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and on her sea trials.”

“That is true that she was built by Laird Brothers, but when we found her she was flying the colors of the Confederate States, which your own government has recognized as a belligerent.” Lamson told the necessary lie. “And her captain was in Confederate uniform. His papers clearly state that she was the property of the so-called Confederate States of America. Why, sir, even the ship’s bell was cast with words CSS North Carolina. She is my prize, and I intend to send her with a prize crew to an American port.”

Lambert was having none of this. “This ironclad is a British ship as far as my orders are concerned, and her status will be determined by British courts. You have committed a hostile act in British waters. I must demand the surrender of your vessel.” He paused, “Or I will take you by force. You have fifteen minutes to strike, sir.”

“When hell freezes over, sir. Now, be on your way.”

Lambert’s face turned red at the peremptory dismissal from the mere Yankee cub. Not even the boldest Frenchmen would have dared to snap his fingers in the lion’s face like that. He turned on his heel and hastened down the side and into his boat, eager to make good his threat.

No sooner had his boat pushed off than Gettysburg sped forward, the wake tossing Lambert’s boat about and giving the captain a good splash. The American ship maintained station on the opposite side of the ram. Lamson was careful to keep his vulnerable paddlewheel behind the ram’s forward turret. It was a furious British captain who climbed up onto his quarterdeck. His disposition did not improve as he attempted to maneuver around the ram to get a good shot at the American ship that just continued to circle the other way. It was obvious the American captain was using the ram’s unloaded freeboard of only six feet to mask the fire of the fifteen 8-inch rifles and 32-pounder smoothbore guns of Liverpool’s gun deck battery. That left his eight 40-pounder Armstrongs and the bruising 110-pounder Armstrong pivot gun on the main deck. The four Dahlgrens that could bear on the Liverpool’s main deck fired 135-pound projectiles for a broadside weight of 540 pounds. Liverpool’s nine main deck guns totaled only 430 pounds of projectile weight. In effect, by Lamson’s maneuver, the smaller ship had a 26 percent advantage in broadside weight. Even that was deceptive because the Dahlgren projectiles were far more destructive.

Lamson’s cat and mouse game with Liverpool gave Goshawk time to come up and take up station on Gettysburg’s open flank, but her one 68-pounder, one 32-pounder, and two 20-pounders were vastly outmatched by the larger guns that the American ship could bring to bear.

Lamson looked at his pocket watch as the last few minutes counted down. Behind him Adams said, “You must let him fire first; it is imperative that the British start this.”

“Have no fear, Mr. Adams. But I do suggest that you get below. Pray, sir, do not make me waste a Marine to watch over you.” Lamson could feel the tension settle over all three ships as the last seconds fell away. The men were steady at their posts, the Dahlgrens double-shotted. The command to fire echoed across the ram from the British ship. Instantly Liverpool was engulfed in smoke as her main deck battery fired. Lamson felt the shock wave cross the ram and push him back like the shove of a giant, and instantly Gettysburg’s guns roared back.

Through the smoke, Lamson heard the shout of the gun captains as their crews leapt back into action. All the guns were still in action. The British were now firing at will. A bullet struck the railing where he stood. Adams was still on deck and came up to point at the Royal Marines firing their Enfields from the rigging at Lamson. “Look out!” he threw himself at Lamson, knocking him to the deck. In the next moment he cried out and fell over Lamson. Two Marines ran up to pull Adams off the captain, then took aim with their Spencer repeaters. One by one the British Marines dropped from the rigging.

The fire from Liverpool slackened. A breeze blew the smoke away enough to reveal the carnage of splinters, dismounted guns, smashed carriages, and the dead and dying across her decks. Goshawk was an even worse shambles, now drifting away with fires starting. Lamson inspected his own ship and found that a shell had detonated inside the smokestack and left it like a colander. Another shell had gone through the top of the engine house, and a 110-pound shot had lodged in the sternpost. His casualties were few, but Liverpool was not going to play his game any longer. She came about to circle around the ram, but Lamson was faster and rounded that ship in time to send a shell from his pivot gun into her stern and watch it explode, spewing out wooden debris and a body. Lambert turned hard to starboard, circling back to open Gettysburg to his gun deck battery. His ship rocked as it fired in one well-timed volley. At the distance of barely three hundred yards, it struck Gettysburg a brutal blow. The port paddlewheel disintegrated, and the crew of one of the waist guns was swept away in a bloody wind. With only his larboard paddle-wheel in operation, Gettysburg automatically turned in that direction. The ragged cheer from Liverpool was cut short when Lamson’s remaining Dahlgrens poured their fire into the Liverpool’s gun deck. He could see shells exploding inside, but the British fire did not slacken.

What Lamson could not see was the scene around Liverpool’s Armstrong gun. When the gunner pulled the lanyard, the vent piece on the gun blew out and straight up like a bullet. The breech blew back at the same time. The crew stood stunned, their stares only broken by the red-coated body of a Royal Marine who fell from the rigging, bouncing over the smoking breech, brought down by the vent piece.

The two ships were now paralleling each other, trading blows in an arc as Gettysburg’s stricken paddlewheel condemned it to steaming in a circle. The crews of both ships had no time to pay much attention to the ram, which had slowly been settling. Lamson’s engineer had opened the sea cocks as planned when Liverpool approached. With only six feet of freeboard, the ram settled fast. The water rushed over her decks and into the open hatches. She went under, barely noticed by either ship.

The laws of naval warfare clearly allowed Lamson to strike his colors at this moment. He had accomplished his critical mission when the North Carolina slipped beneath the waters of Moelfre Bay, and his ship was hopelessly disabled in those same hostile waters. Yet Lamson was just plain bloody minded and would sooner drag Liverpool to the bottom with him before he quit.

Lambert knew he had won. The American ship was crippled and could not escape. It was only a matter of time. He must strike, but he didn’t. Instead that ship continued to send those deadly XI-inch shells into Liverpool’s guts, turning his gun deck into an abattoir. “Strike, damn you, strike!” Lambert shouted in rage. The Liverpool’s crew was so focused on its death struggle with the enemy that another ship was able to approach without notice-until a shell struck the frigate’s port battery. Kearsarge had arrived.

Capt. John Winslow had taken Adams’s letter seriously. Kearsarge arrived at the Mersey’s mouth an hour after Liverpool and Goshawk had departed after Gettysburg. Dudley, still in his dispatch boat, had informed Winslow, who followed the other ships pouring on the coal. He had heard the battle and seen the smoke in plenty of time to come to battle stations. With an American ship in battle with another ship, he did not trouble himself with the niceties of international maritime law, but came to the rescue of the flag.

Aboard Gettysburg, Lamson shouted to the gun crews that it was Kearsarge. A cheer went up as the British ship turned to meet its new opponent. Kearsarge had the element of surprise, but it was still a big frigate against a smaller American 1,550-ton Mohican class sloop of war. Lamson and his crew were now spectators as their ship carved a slowing arc away from the British ship. Liverpool’s 32-pounders had been no match for the Dahlgrens, but at the close range they had been fighting, they served more than well enough to hull Gettysburg in a dozen places. The hull’s iron plates had not absorbed the shock of shot as a wooden ship could but had sprung their rivets along their seams. The ship’s carpenter reported that she was taking water faster than the men could pump it out.

“Well, Mr. Porter, at least we don’t have to strike. Now she dies well.” He struck the railing with his fist. “Bring the wounded up and prepare to load them into the boats that have not been smashed. Keep the forward pivot crew at their gun. I want it to keep in action whenever it can bear.” The ship’s arc took it away from the duel between Liverpool and Kearsarge. Winslow was keeping his distance and using his superior mobility and guns to strike the larger wounded frigate with little chance of being struck in turn.

Gettysburg slowed as she took on more and more water, despite the heroic work of the men at the pumps and the carpenter’s futile caulking of the sprung seams. There was a perceptible list. The pivot gun fired its last shot before the list depressed it too far to sight, and Lamson watched its shell strike Liverpool square amidships, knocking a four-foot hole. It exploded inside, spewing debris out the hole. Smoke began to pour from the hole with orange tongues of fire darting through. Ammunition was exploding inside the gun deck. Fire began to gush out the gun ports. Gettysburg’s crewmen on deck stopped, mesmerized by the death of the frigate. They watched men jump overboard as the fire ran up the rigging and poured up through the hatches.

The Liverpool seemed to heave amidships, her back arching, as a column of fire burst from her deck and shot upward. The shock wave pulsed out, followed by the deafening sound. The force of the explosion shuddered through the ship, and then blew outward. Liverpool simply disappeared in the blast of its own magazines. The sound was heard in Birkenhead and Liverpool sixty miles to the east, through the vales and valleys of northern Wales to the southwest, and west across the Irish Sea. That was only the functioning of physics. The political shock wave would surge around the world.

UNITED STATES EMBASSY, LONDON, 4:11 AM, SEPTEMBER 5, 1863

Charles Adams had spent a sleepless night. Russell’s note of the first had reached him only yesterday afternoon. He wrote in his diary, “I clearly foresee that a collision must now come. The prospect is dark for poor America.”¹³ In the meantime, Russell had done nothing to tell him of the decision to seize the rams. Adams dressed and sat at his desk to compose the most difficult letter of his life. He summed up the failures of the British government to stop the depredations originating from its shores and then delivered the ultimatum that Lincoln had ordered him to put before Russell and the cabinet. On his own initiative, he spelled it out with a final sentence of his own, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.”

A few minutes after dispatching the note, John Bright was announced. Adams saw him immediately. One of America’s few friends in Parliament was always welcome, but the early hour indicated some crisis. Members of Parliament kept late hours, for the House met long into the night, but most were sound asleep by this hour. Bright was alert and visibly agitated, in contrast to his somber Quaker clothes.

“Mr. Adams, I must hear from you how this calamity has happened. The House sits at noon. Terrible rumors are spreading all over London. I must be able to speak with some knowledge of events.”

“Mr. Bright, I am at a loss. To what calamity do you refer?”

Bright stared at him for a brief moment, incredulous. Then he said, “Do you mean to tell me you do not know of yesterday’s late afternoon’s battle in Moelfre Bay?”

“I know nothing of this.”

Bright sat down as if the weight of the world had crashed down on his shoulders. “I have been informed by a most reliable source that two British ships and two American ships fought a naval battle yesterday over one of the rams that had escaped to Moelfre Bay. There has been terrible loss of British life. HMS Liverpool and Goshawk went down with almost six hundred men.”

The stunned look on Adams’s face was proof that the ambassador had not yet heard of the battle. “It must have been the Gettysburg. She was here to intercept the rams if they should escape as the Alabama did with the connivance of certain officials.”

“Mr. Adams, the entire issue of the rams and the Alabama will drop by the wayside compared to a British warship sunk in British waters. When this knowledge becomes public, there will be such a cry for war that no government could withstand it.”

“Then I must call on Lord Russell to explain what I can.”

“Too late, I fear, too late.”

When Adams attempted to leave for Whitehall an hour later, he had to brave a crowd that had already gathered outside the embassy. The police moved the crowd back, but they could not prevent a brick from being thrown at his vehicle.

Layard received Adams with great coldness and silence. Adams waited an hour in the anteroom before he was admitted to Russell’s office, where Layard took a chair as well.

Russell wasted no time on pleasantries but waved Adams’s note and demanded an explanation, “Indeed, sir, this means war.”

Adams asked to be informed of what Lord Russell knew. Russell sketched the broad outlines of the battle, concluding, “The Kearsarge, at least, had the decency to rescue the seventy-three survivors, mostly from Goshawk and set them ashore at Amlwch on Angelsey. The Kearsarge was last seen steaming southeast. Every ship within reach has been dispatched to take or sink her.”

“Lord Russell, I assure you that my government gave no orders to attack ships of the Royal Navy. The captain of the Gettysburg had orders to intercept the rams should they escape from Liverpool.” He added emphasis to his next words, “as the Alabama did with the open connivance of members of your own government.”

“By God, sir,” roared Russell. Adams had not suspected that such emotion lurked in so small a man. It had as much effect as rain on New England granite. “Do you mean that you blame Her Majesty’s government for what can only be described as an act of war?”

“Indeed, I do, Lord Russell,” Adams said. “Your government has done everything in its power to wage war on my country short of firing directly upon us. The United States has been provoked beyond all measure and has responded as is the right of every nation-to pursue pirates into the ports or waters that shelter them.”

“Her Majesty’s government determined to stop the departure of the rams and issued the appropriate orders.”

“And with evident great success. You may recall the stream of communications with which I begged you for months to take such action. How, sir, am I to believe that when I received your note only yesterday that stated most firmly that no evidence existed sufficient to invoke the Foreign Enlistment Act.”

Russell shot Layard a reproachful look. “Regrettably, the note was written shortly before our decision and unaccountably delayed.”

“Then, sir, why did you not inform me at the earliest moment that you intended to stop the rams from sailing?”

“We desired to gain the approval of the law officers of the Crown in such an important matter.”

“Not good enough, Lord Russell, not good enough. Your private note that you were proceeding along these lines would have defused this situation at once. I could have sent word to Gettysburg to stand down. None of this would have happened had you heeded my government’s remonstrations earlier.”

Having taken what he thought the moral high ground, Adams sought to be conciliatory. “Surely, Lord Russell, our governments can have the wisdom and patience to avoid war even at this late hour. These events can only be described as an accident, a terrible accident, but an accident all the same. A war would only multiply a thousand times the dead, and for what? An accident? Surely the fact that Kearsarge rescued all British seamen and set them ashore into the hands of British authorities and proper medical care indicates that no act of war was intended. I propose that a joint British-American commission be charged to examine this affair and report back to both governments. If that is not acceptable, I suggest a mediation by a disinterested state, such as Prussia.”¹⁶

Russell intertwined his fingers as he said, “What is important, Mr. Adams, is that two British ships were attacked and sunk in British waters with the loss of six hundred British officers and men. I would expect your passport to be returned to you in short order. The cabinet meets in two hours.”

A large crowd had gathered in front of Whitehall as news of the battle had spread throughout London. When it was revealed the American ambassador was meeting with Lord Russell, it became an angry mob. It took a strong detachment of mounted police to see Adams safely to the embassy.

He immediately began to pen a report to Seward of his interview with Russell and the events as he knew them. Before he dipped his pen in the inkwell, he paused for a moment to think of his son. “Henry, my boy. I sent you off hoping the experience would draw some strength out of you. And now you are gone with the Gettysburg. My boy, my poor boy… my poor country.”

USS KEARSARGE, RACING NORTH THROUGH THE IRISH SEA, 9:36 PM, SEPTEMBER 5, 1863

Winslow had not left the bridge since he had put the British prisoners and wounded ashore. He had sailed southeast until he was sure there was no pursuit and then doubled back to sail north through the Irish Sea. Lamson joined him, having spent much of the late afternoon and evening with his twenty-eight wounded men whom the Kearsarge had rescued. Winslow was smoking a pipe as he walked the deck while the stars were coming out to twinkle over the great, unhappy waves of the Irish Sea. He paused to think that St. Patrick had been brought over these waters from Britain as a slave to a band of Gaelic pirates.

Winslow was middle aged and had grown up with the Navy. If he had ever had the dash of Lamson, it had left him with his youth in the routine of decades of a peacetime navy. He was a solid man who knew his business and did not shrink from a fight. He had been “exiled” to the Channel Station after an impolite reference to the President in public. He was enjoying the momentary pleasure of considering how that would compare to his sloop sinking a British frigate. No U.S. naval officer in combat against the rebellion had sent such a ship to the bottom. Of course, he would give young Lamson all his due in beating the hell out of the frigate before Kearsarge came to the rescue.

Winslow thanked God that his own losses had been only one dead and twelve wounded. Eleven of Lamson’s men had gone to the bottom with Gettysburg, and he had lost thirty-nine of ninety-six men. “How are your wounded, Captain?” he greeted Lamson, still according him the honorary title though he no longer had a ship and would revert to the permanent rank of lieutenant.

“Doing well, thank you. Your surgeon is a man of rare talent, Captain. And you are a man of rare timing. I had determined to keep fighting until she went under rather than strike when the Kearsarge arrived out of nowhere.”

“You can thank Ambassador Adams for that,” Winslow puffed on his pipe and leaned over the side. “Speaking of the ambassador, how is his son doing?”

“The surgeon thinks he shall recover. He received a ball clean through the shoulder, courtesy of the Royal Marines. He will be able to dine out on it for the rest of his life. I owe him mine. He pushed me aside to take the ball aimed for me. I hadn’t thought he had it in him.”

Winslow tucked that away in his mind and turned to the matter at hand. “We shall be home in a week if we can avoid the entire damned Royal Navy, which I am sure is after us as we speak. There will be hell to pay, Captain. You realize that we have real naval war on us now, don’t you? It’s just not blockade duty or river gunboats or pounding away at forts, but a navy war with the greatest Navy in the world.”

Lamson did not appear dismayed.

Winslow just shook his head and muttered to himself, “Hell to pay, hell to pay.”